Book review: 'Undaunted Courage' by Stephen E. Ambrose

For two decades (literally) I've been meaning to read Undaunted Courage, ever since I found out that my Boss Man at the time was reading it, and I never thought he read anything except cereal boxes, so it had to be good.

At the East Falls Church Metro station not long ago, a woman walked up when she saw me engaged in the book, and talked about it nonstop while we waited for the train, and she continued chatting about it on the train. 

I know a book is good when I think about the characters during the day (!) and wonder what they are doing which first happened to me with Lonesome Dove, one of the last great contemporary fictions I have read.  But, back to the subject. Undaunted is a very good book.  And it's not fiction.I wondered what they were doing for food.  (Here, would you like some horse with that bitterroot?)

Although it starts out dry (someone said "like a history book") it doesn't take long before it inserts its hypnosis in your mind, and off you go riding on the trail (1804-1806), on the wagons, the horses, and the tree boats on the waterways with Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) whose assignment from President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was to find a northwest route to the Pacific Ocean which they did not, but they got to the Pacific.

Never mind.

Reading correspondence always enlivens any story, and here, the characters come alive in the only way they can.  President Jefferson's hopes, dreams, doubts, and orders to find a route are laid out.  He becomes more personable, too.

Excellent maps are included, and I kept wishing there were more of them to supply additional details.

Escaping and befriending various tribes of Indians are only part of the story.  The explorers' mastery of icy mountains and river crossings are astonishing, and Lewis describes vividly in his journals their discoveries of new plants, birds, and animals.  The men's jarring with bears, snakes, and their communication with Indians when no one spoke the others' languages were just a few of the feats which load the book and leave you incredulous so much was accomplished amidst the harsh conditions.
  
A surprising element with scattered bits of information found throughout the tale is description of a married couple who accompanied them, the woman, an Indian, Sacagawea, who joined the troop to help with language interpretation.  On the way she gave birth to their first child, and later, after the journey ended and she died,  Clark adopted both her children.  

I don't believe anyone has been able to pinpoint the exact reasons, after the journey ended, that Lewis did not respond to Jefferson's letters and pleas for information about the publication of Lewis's journals, but I shall join others and offer my guess.
   
Perhaps he was overwhelmed and did not know how to begin the massive project, assembling and ordering his papers, and take them through the publication process, unable to report to Jefferson that he had not begun. Sometimes, beginning is the hardest part. 

After the journey ended, President Jefferson appointed Lewis to the governorship of the Louisiana Territory. On a trip from there to Washington, D.C., Lewis supposedly killed himself on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, according to "experts." (Here is the place. )   (When presented the evidence, Jefferson joined the believers, but there are many doubters.)

In 1996 (the year Undaunted came out) a Tennessee coroner's jury recommended (in concert with 200 members of Lewis's family) that his body be exhumed for forensic analysis which only took the U.S. Department of the Interior 12 years, until 2008 to sanction.  In 2010 the Obama administration rescinded the decision. Why?  (New book.) 

Maybe an erstwhile member of the Meriwether Lewis Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation can conduct her own exploration and use FOIA to request documents,  learn the reason(s), and write all about it. 

In later years Undaunted's author, Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002) was accused of sloppy research and plagiarism in many of his books. 

I kept wishing I had read it before I took a cross-country trip last year with my son, since we traveled on and near many of places Lewis and Clark visited.  We might still be on the road. 

A companion pictorial history is also available, with many of the marvelous scenes and paintings included in the original volume, all to be found at my favorite public library, the Fairfax County Public Library, the best.

patricialesli@gmail.com 

Snakes at Tysons Corner

After he was thrown out of my peaceable kingdom and into the hallway.  What kind is it? Answer at bottom/Patricia Leslie

Last Sunday night I zipped around the corner in my wee abode to look up a word in my big fat American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition which sits atop my favorite piece of furniture I bought with last year's income tax refund at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  That piece of furniture is my Thomas Jefferson Dictionary Stand.

The Thomas Jefferson Dictionary Stand, sold in the Monticello gift shop.  Monticello may call it a Library Stand, but it doesn't hold a "library."  It holds a dictionary/Monticello

Out of the corner of my eye I saw laying on the carpet beside the can of Johnson’s Pledge and a dust mitt (reminders to dust my Thomas Jefferson Dictionary Stand which has all these holes and glass requiring removal of the books on the shelves underneath and is quite a complicated (i.e. time consuming) operation) what appeared to be the toy snake I had given my grandson in April for his birthday, but as my mind and eyes adjusted to reality and expanded to the approximate size of the American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition, and I... blinked several times, being without my glasses, and.....and.....! ! !.... realized... it.....was not....could...not...be... my grandson’s toy....snake...... since..... since....my grandson....lives in Georgia ....... and....here......I was.... in....Virginia.... which meant…

which meant…

YOWEE, a real snake! 

AAUUGGGHHHH

I screamed bloody murder.

And no rescue was forthcoming.

The snake was approximately three feet long.

It was like a terrible dream which was not a dream at all.

Shaking, I found my phone and tried to dial my neighbor, however it took several seconds before I could quell the trembling in my fingers and remember the second letter of her name to look up in “My Contacts.”  At last, I was able to reach Margo who, thankfully, was at home.

In a whimper, I described the scene.

“I don’t know how to get a snake out of your place,” Margo said without emotion.

“What am I going to do?” I finally got out the words.  The snake remained motionless on the floor and played dead.

Margo suggested putting a trash can over the snake, but remembering the snake which appeared in my neighbor’s place across the hall last year which hid for a week undercover after Joe-Joe, another neighbor and faux rescuer, frightened it, I feared MY SNAKE would escape and hide, too.  (It just seems like we live in a zoo.)

Margo brought over a large red snow shovel and a broom. 

“Come here and look at it,” I said, and she refused.  “I don’t want to see it.”

What was a poor girl to do?  “I need a man,” I said to Margo who replied “you don’t need a man.”  

The snake had not budged and lay close to the Pledge can and the bright lime-green dust mitt.

“Call the police?  I’ll call the police!” I exclaimed.

“They won’t come,” Margo said matter-of-factly.  “They won’t even come for a bear.”  Neither of us knew the non-emergency police number.

What about Joe-Joe?  He’s a man, isn’t he, who could get it out of my place? He had flubbed the deal last year, but this was a new deal!

“No, Joe-Joe has a migraine,”  Margo said. “I talked with him earlier.” 

After she coaxed and encouraged and coaxed and encouraged me, I found lost gumption and smashed the basket trash can upside down on top of that snake, and before it could pry loose, I piled my American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition on top of the trash can in case in case the snake slithered out onto….onto….MY FEET.

“I need a man,” I said.  And some shoes to cover my bare feet.

“No, you don’t need a man.   Just scoot the trash can out the door,” Margo said.  “I just washed Lushy (her dog) and have to go dry him off.” 

“You are leaving?” I asked incredulously.  “You are leaving me alone with this snake?”

She left me alone with that snake under the basket trash can with the dictionary piled on top.  I could hear the snake rustling inside the plastic trash can liner.

Gradually, I began to scoot the upside down basket trash can with the snake inside across the carpet to the front door, all the while listening to it rustle the plastic.  Enroute I stopped about every three inches to find my wits which had earlier departed. 

The door frame at the entrance was going to cause problems because it was not level with the floor, meaning I would have to heave the trash can up a few inches to throw the snake out.  How was I going to do that?  How was I going to physically throw the snake inside the trash can with the dictionary on top out the door so that the snake did not make a rapid return into my peaceable kingdom?

It didn't take long for me to reach the door frame with the snake inside the trash can with the dictionary on top. 

For several minutes I stood in the outdoor hallway with the snake in the trash can, still imprisoned in my entrance way.  We waited for a man to appear. This was a man’s job.

None came.

After a little while, Margo stuck her head out her door and hollered down the hall:  “What’s going on?”

“We are waiting for a man.  This is a man’s job.”

“No, you don’t need a man!” she exclaimed.  “Now just push it, and get it out.” 

While I hemmed and hawed, she made her way back down the hall.

At the doorway I took position, holding the shovel in my left hand as a barrier in case the snake decided to make its way back inside my place, and with my right hand, the trash can and dictionary, wondering how I was supposed to heave them across the door frame with one hand. This was not going to be easy.

Margo stood several feet away in case the snake took out after her.  You know how fast they can be.

She kept encouraging me to get with it and do it.  I was afraid.

Gathering what was left of my being, I heaved the trash can with dictionary across the door frame, screamed louder than before and slammed the door before the snake could race back in. 

Out in the hallway Margo yelled: “It’s out!  It’s out!  It’s slithering!”  I cracked open the door and could see the snake's back side as it rolled over and over trying to upright itself before it crawled to a nearby wall crevice.

Margo urged me to take a picture. Mr. Snake did not take to flash well.

“There, you see,”  Margo gloated, “you did not need a man.”  We both tried to find calm.

Fifteen minutes later I peeked out my doorway and walked to the top of the stairs which Mr. Snake had descended, and there he was, at the landing below, wrapped 90 degrees around the corner.  He turned to look up and me, and I swear, smiled.  Life!

My sister, the animal lover from Florida, called later that night, and after I described the events, she said:  “Don’t kill it.  In the grand scheme of things and what’s going on in Afghanistan and the Middle East, this is nothing.”  She was right, of course, but for a few minutes in my condo, it was something.

*Answer:  The votes are in for:  a checkered garter snake,  a copperhead, a brown snake, a brown rat snake, an eastern hognose. Susan Watson, a terrestrial wildlife biologist with the Virginia Bureau of Wildlife Resources, says: eastern garter snake.